


Call This A Love Song.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - T S Eliot, T. S. Eliot Poems
Genre: Author's Favorite, Fannish Version Of A Famous Poem, Mash-up, Pastiche, Podfic Available, Poetry, Prufrock, Shameless Self-Indulgence, T.S. Eliot - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Highlights of Season 5, with sincere apologies to T.S. Eliot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call This A Love Song.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [devo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devo/gifts).



> This is a mash-up of Doctor Who with [The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock](http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html); I do not think this will make any sense to people who have never read the poem. For [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/devohoneybee/profile)[**devohoneybee**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/devohoneybee/), who said I should write Doctor/Prufrock, and for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ribby/profile)[**ribby**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ribby/), who encouraged me to finish it.
> 
>  
> 
> **Continuity/Canon:** through Doctor Who 5.12 The Pandorica Opens.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Podfic by nickelmountain is [available here](http://nickelmountain.livejournal.com/50217.html?format=light). :D

"Let us go then, you and I,  
When the evening is spread out against the sky  
Like a patient etherised upon a table."  
And we went, through certain planetary retreats  
Across whispering streets  
That spoke of horrors and monsters beyond tales  
Of sawdust creatures with oyster shells:  
Adventures that followed among arguments  
Of decorous intent  
To lead Amy to an overwhelming realization...  
Oh, do not ask, "Who is it?"  
Let us go and make our visit.

Among the stars, they come and go  
Talking of Vincent Van Gogh.

The pale thin crack that runs along Amy's wall,  
The glowing gap in space and time that runs along Amy's wall  
Swallowed Rory from out of history one dark evening,  
While we lingered too long in the dangerous earth,  
And the memories fell like soot that falls from chimneys,  
Slipped through cracks in the universe, quickly growing.  
And seeing that Amy had lost cruel memory's fight,  
The Doctor hid his grief, and kept the ring.

And indeed there will be time  
For the pale thin cracks that run through Amy's wall,  
Swallowing Rory and Angels and more;  
There will be time, there will be time  
To meet the voices dying with a dying fall;  
There will be time to murder and create,  
And time for all the memories and lost rings  
That depend on the TARDIS and on fate;  
Time for you and time for me,  
And time yet for the Doctor's indecisions,  
And for a hundred timeline paradoxical revisions,  
Before the taking of fish custard and tea.

Among the stars, they come and go  
Talking of Vincent Van Gogh.

And indeed there will be time  
To wonder, "Who would dare?" and, "Will I dare?"  
Time to turn back on the Pandorica's stair,  
And demand his enemies play fair--  
[They will say, "Since when do we care?"]  
His tweed jacket, his boots digging into the floor,  
His bowtie striped and crooked, splattered with cyber gore--  
[They will say, "Show him the door!"]  
Do we dare  
Disturb the universe?  
With the TARDIS, there is time  
For decisions and revisions which may make this worse.

For he has known them all already, known them all--  
Has known the Daleks, Cybermen, Slitheen,  
He started this life fighting the Nestene;  
He knows the voices dying with a dying fall  
Beneath the screams coming from the far room.  
So how dare they presume?

And he has known the guns already, known them all--  
The guns that scorch the TARDIS doors,  
And having been scorched, then explode,  
And when the dust settles, splattered against the wall,  
Then he begins,  
To pick up the remnants of his existence, his days and ways,  
And so how dare they presume?

And he has known the friends already, known them all--  
Friends in heart and spirit and are so very rare  
[As he told them, he chooses them with great care]  
But can Rory's return  
Cause the universe to burn?  
Arms that clasp his in friendship, or follow him into war.  
And how does he presume?  
And how will this end?

. . . . .

Shall we say, we have gone at dusk through London streets  
And watched the smoke that rises from downed aircraft  
And dying men in uniforms, charging into the stars?

"We should have been a pair for the ages,  
Swimming across the floors of silent Venice."

. . . . .

And the cracks in time follow us so malevolently!  
As if pulled apart by long fingers,  
Following... widening... and it malingers,  
Kneeling on the TARDIS floor, holding fast to memory.  
Should he, after Rory and Silurian violence,  
Have the strength to reach into the silence?  
But though Amy wept and screamed, wept and fought,  
Though he had seen his TARDIS [blown slightly apart] inside the crack,  
He is no prophet -- and this is a great lack;  
For he has seen the moment of his greatness flicker,  
While Amy forgot and screamed at the fates that picked her,  
And in short, we were afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,  
After the Daleks, the War, the Queen,  
Among the TARDIS console, talking of where we've been,  
Would it have been worth while,  
To have bitten off a smile with the truth,  
To have squeezed the questions into a ball  
And rolled it to the overwhelming problem,  
To say: "You are Amy Pond, you have no memory,  
Of things you should, of the Daleks's fall"--  
If he, before going back for Rory,  
Should say: "You make no sense at all.  
None of it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,  
Would it have been worth while,  
After the Angels and Clerics and Venetian canals,  
After the dream lord, after picking our future up from the floor--  
And this, and so much more?--  
"You do not listen when I say just what I mean!"  
It is as if a magic lantern has made recent history unseen:  
Would it have been worth while,  
If he, anticipating the oncoming fall,  
And settling into the maintenance swing, should say:  
"Your life make no sense at all.  
None of it, at all."

. . . . .

"Yes! I am Rory Williams, as much as I could ever be;  
Not an Auton, I, one that will do  
To kill Amy, start a war or two,  
Go tell the Nestene, I am not your easy tool,  
Obedient, glad to be of use,  
Mindless, thorough, and meticulous;  
Yet I find myself mid-sentence, oh hell, I have been obtuse;  
At time, indeed, almost murderous---  
My god. I have been such a fool."

He is old... he is old...  
He wears the sleeves of his jacket rolled.

"Shall I leave the air lock behind? Shall I fall into his reach?"  
He wears brown tweed trousers and walks upon the beach.  
He hears the Angels singing, each to each.

He truly hopes they will not sing to him.

We have seen them flying upwards through the maze  
Speaking with stolen voices as they are blown into the crack  
While the gravity shift blows us up and back.

We have lingered in the hidden places of time  
By TARDIS tales wreathed with starlight gold and brown  
Till we land on distant shorelines, and we drown.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Call This A Love Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/312029) by [nickelmountain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelmountain/pseuds/nickelmountain)




End file.
